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Lisa Lickel
Writing is Forever
Posted by Luther D. Powell on June 21, 2012
My beach vacation this past week was both productive and very not productive towards my writing. Came up with a world of story ideas, wrote lots of notes and filled up a good chunk of my journal, which is great. Didn’t actually write any scenes or dialogue of a story, which is not so great.
I get all frustrated, restless and irritable when I’ve gone too long without writing any meat of a story. I feel like I’ve been slacking off, been lazy, and overall, I hate not getting things done. I’ll pop a movie in, read a book, play Plants vs. Zombies (undeniably the most addictive game in existence) on the computer for a few hours or so and I’ll think, “This is fun. Why don’t I have fun more often?” But then I slap myself and I think, “But wait! Writing is fun too! Why haven’t I done THAT in so long?!”
Last night, it dawned on me just how much time I have to write anything and everything I have in mind to write. The answer: all of it. Yeah, if the world ends or if I die in some freak shaving accident in the next few years, then I have a few years, but I’d prefer to think I’ve got longer than that. Say, my whole life, maybe? ‘Cause here’s what hit me the other night. I want to write, I want to be a writer, make writing my career, publish books and short stories to provide for myself and the family I hope to start eventually. Publishers aside, who employs me to write? God, and myself. God gives me the time and free will to write, and I write because I want to write. There’s no retirement, there’s no getting fired, there’s no getting laid off; I write until I choose not to write anymore!
This realization, simple as it might sound, is extremely encouraging to me, because now, instead of thinking, “Oh man, I have to finish this book before somebody else out there comes up with an idea close to mine but better and then nobody will want mine,” I’m thinking, “I pretty much have from now until my hands quit working to write something worth reading.” The act of getting published will probably take a while, so I’ll be needing some other job on the side to keep me fed, probably other than drawing portraits (which I can also do until my hands fall off). Some of the greatest authors, J.R.R. Tolkien for example, didn’t even finish everything they had to offer before they passed on and they STILL gained loads of recognition! Not to compare myself to Tolkien, but you know what I mean.
In a weird way, I write quicker under pressure, but I write BETTER without it. Truth is, I couldn’t be any less pressured to write, and I have no reason to grump out on myself. Maybe when I’m published, I’ll be given times limits to complete certain books. I honestly don’t know how all that works just yet, but either way, until anybody demands more of me, I’ve got my whole life to perfect the stuff I want other people to read. I hope this is encouraging to my writer friends in the slightest: You only have your entire life to write what you want to write.
In Christ,
Luther D. Powell
2 Responses to “Writing is Forever”
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patches24 said
Hi Luther,
You may not have got the meat and scenes for your book written down, but you have written your blog and i think that for writers it is important that they write something that they can proffer to be read.
Nice article.
Lisa Lickel said
Yep-there you go! Thinking about things is great. I was once looking through some notes and came across fifty pages of a novel I’d written and had no memory of.
Last night as I was working on the latest contest for Wisconsin Writers I was thinking about how passionate I am for my writers who send things in for the magazine I edit for them. Most of them aren’t ever or want to be professional writers. What am I passionate about in the writing field? The writers who want to be professional. I love my people who are excited to see their stuff in print, but the writers who want to get paid–who want to keep growing their craft, then turn around and bring up others….ah, they are my passion.